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Chip Creep

superstar

Posted 15 January 2016 - 12:41 PM

superstar

Member

Member

716 posts

Visting a friend´s home and have been helping them learn how to use some applications and such.
Past few days they´ve left the computer on for quite a while. Nothing major since a computer is meant
to be used. They´ve got all the necessary setup needs since I installed and pretty much serviced everything
here for some odd years now. It´s an older Compaq Presario tower and well about a couple of days ago
it was shut off during the evening. The next morning I came to turn it on and the computer wouldn´t
reach the desktop. Had to hard shutdown by holding the power button. Turned it back on and it stalled
at the desktop, froze, and rebooted on it´s own. Unlikely to be a virus is what I thought since ESET is
on this machine and they barely use the pc at all (probably 20-30 short days of use in 2015). Although it has been used quite a lot since I got here. I´m a pretty knowledgable tech so I´ve been showing them new things for days on end. Knew a quick way to rule out a virus was to go into the bios and see if the pc was shaky. Sure enough I began to see graphical glitches on the screen while sitting in the bios menu (not touching any settings). It then froze... Right away my mind said it´s either the PSU, Ram, HDD, or the computer is dying out. I took the cover off of the tower the thing is almost spotless since I´ve cleaned it myself many times. Took the ram completely out (only one stick is installed on the first slot), and then wiped the seemingly clean edge with a paper towel and reseated it back into the slot. I turned the machine on and sure enough it went right into the desktop without any errors whatsoever. Left it on for a few and no errors occurred. During this time I used Everest to check the SMART status of the HDD´s and all values were indeed passing. So I took out my trusty Memtest 86+ disc and left the memory testing for about 24 hours. The next day I came to find absolutely no errors whatsoever in Memtest 86+. The computer has since worked absolutely fine and I´m assuming the cause was chip creep (memory moving out of it´s slot due to fluctuations in temperature or slightly movement by any means). They do however live in an area that is hot during the day and sometimes cold at night. There are also small earthquakes here on occasion. I find it to be lucky for them as I´m currently visiting and had I not been here a tech in this area would have scammed them
for sure.

What I can´t for the life of me understand is what this message meant one of the times it wasn´t booting
when the problem initially occurred:

(Note: This is not the exact message but one I pooled off Google, though extremely similar)

What do you guys make of this situation, would you agree with my diagnosis?

& what of the error code which I know to be almost spot on as a TRAP Exception message?

Should I go about any other physical measures to ensure the memory or anything else is fine?
(I´ve been thinking about using computer safe contact cleaner on the memory pin contacts,
as well as the memory itself.)

click on "free downloads" and scroll down to "crash analysis tools", download and run the free home edition, and this may help point usin the right direction.

2 Download (if you don't already have one in your bag) a live distro of linux... I tend to use puppy Linux as its a small distro and runs on older kit.... burn the .iso as an image (it must be an image (a copy won't do the job!) I can link you to a step by step if you don't normally use Linux ) just post back and let me know.

Let puppy run in RAM, no need to install it.... give the machine a good workout... you should be able to connect OK to the net (using Ethernet cable) access photos, docs etc..... give it a real good test.... if it works Ok then we have practically ruled out most hardware issues... and you should be good to go..